


All My Secrets Away

by sanctuary_for_all



Series: The Spider and the Hawk [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Assassins In Love, Cuddles, Established Relationship, F/M, Spoilers, that arrow necklace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-18 12:04:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1427800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanctuary_for_all/pseuds/sanctuary_for_all
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Damn it, Tash, you should have called.” </p><p>Postscript for "Captain America: The Winter Soldier." (NOW WITH CHAPTER 2!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Natasha

**Author's Note:**

> The arrow necklace Natasha wore in pretty much every scene of "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" filled my heart with such joy. When you work closely with an archer, and everyone who knows you well knows you work closely with an archer, its not just a casual piece of jewelry. Especially for someone like Natasha, it's a statement.
> 
> Also, I could only imagine how pissed off Clint must have been to have missed out on all the action.

Natasha hadn’t been entirely honest with Steve – she’d blown all the cover identities she used for work, yes, but there were a small handful not in any database that she used simply as an escape hatch. Two, no one knew about – as their most recent adventure had confirmed, mind control was a genuine risk in their line of work.

The rest were known by only one other person.

She opened her eyes in the darkened bedroom, not so much alerted by a sound as the subtle sense of another presence in the apartment. Sounds wouldn’t have been helpful anyway – in this part of La Paz, the city provided a sonic cover at all hours of the night.

Natasha lay absolutely still, hand curled around the gun under her pillow as she listened for the clues in the spaces between the noise. When she heard the rhythm of breath as familiar to her as her own, her fingers relaxed and a small smile curled her lips. “You’re late.”

“I tried Mexico City first.” Clint climbed into bed next to her, the darkness of the bedroom making it impossible to see his expression. The annoyance brimming under his voice, however, gave her a pretty good idea of what he was going to say next. “Damn it, Tash, you should have called.”

“You were busy.” She turned onto her side, fingertips trailing lightly over the slopes of his face.

“ _Aliens_ could land again and I still wouldn’t be busy enough to want you to take down SHIELD without me.” He caught her hand, interlacing their fingers. “And yes, I know you handled it. But I hate hearing about this kind of thing on CNN.”

“Did you see any of the hearings coverage?” She shifted closer, their breath mingling together. “Fox News thinks I’m a ticking time bomb. I’m rather proud.”

Clint sighed. “That means you dyed your hair again, didn’t you? Damn it.” He let go of her hand to finger the now short, curly strands framing her face. “What color is it this time?”

“Black.” Amused, she let her own fingers tunnel through his hair. “But it’s only temporary.”

“Bless you.” Then his hand moved to her cheek, his touch utterly tender. “Talk to me.”

Natasha felt the catch of something in her throat. She’d done so well at holding it all back, but the wall between her and her emotions was always thinner when Clint was this close. “Nothing to talk about.” She rested her forehead against his. “I did what needed to be done.”

“You always do.” His voice was soft. “But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt like a son of a bitch.”

She closed her eyes against the sudden stinging she could feel in them. “They made me a puppet again,” she whispered.

“No.” The word was firm, Clint’s hand shifting to cradle her face. “You got conned. We all did. But they didn’t control us. Not this time.”

She could hear the bitterness at the back of his throat, twin to the one that twined through hers. It was only one of the many things that bound them together. “Maybe no one needs to control me.” She would have never allowed her voice to be this unsteady in front of anyone else. “Maybe I’m just drawn to the darkness.”

Clint swore softly, then pulled her into his arms. She allowed herself to be moved, wrapping her own arms around him as he pressed his face against her hair. There were no words that could comfort her when memories of the Red Room rose up – Clint had tried – but his touch felt like an absolution she didn’t deserve.

“If that was true, there’s no way you could stand Rogers,” he murmured finally, startling a laugh out of her.

“True.” Her eyes were wet, but she knew he would never mention it. “Fury’s alive, by the way.”

“You always liked him better than I did.” His hold relaxed enough that he could rub his cheek against hers, a scratch of bristle that felt more like home to Natasha than any building or country ever had. “But then you clearly have terrible taste in men.”

Her lips curved up. “You would know.” He rolled onto his back, and she let herself sprawl across his chest to get comfortable again.

Natasha could practically feel Clint’s smile. “Anyone tell you you’re a little bit possessive?”

Something in her chest constricted. “No.” She lifted her head, letting her voice be as quiet and serious as she felt. Another piece of the truth, for the man who knew more of her than anyone else. “This is the first time I have been.”

She heard his sudden, startled exhalation of breath, then a swallow. "Next time you try to tell me you're not a romantic," he managed finally, pulling her down for a soft kiss, "I'm gonna remind you of this moment."

Natasha settled back down against him, tucking her head into the curve of his neck. "It's not the same thing at all."

He pressed a kiss against the top of her hair. "Well, I like it."

She flattened her hand against his chest, palm resting against the spider charm she could feel underneath the thin fabric of his t-shirt. It was the companion to the arrow she wore around her own neck, neither ever taken off unless the undercover operation demanded it. A promise between them, made without words.

Love, it turned out, was for anyone brave enough to believe in it.

Natasha smiled as she let herself drift off to sleep. "Good."


	2. Clint

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Turns out this story wasn't as finished as I thought it was. :D Any mentions of Clint's backstory are pulled from the comic books, since so far the MCU has given us almost nothing in that department.

It was just past dawn when Clint looked up to see Tash standing in the entryway to the living room, glaring at him with her hands on her hips. "Did you sleep?"

He thought about lying – anyone who tells you honesty is always the best policy is an idiot – but she looked far too awake for someone who he could have sworn was unconscious five minutes ago. All lying would do was start a fight. "Enough."

She raised an eloquent eyebrow, then dropped down to sit across from him on the floor. His arrows lay between them, the ones he'd scrounged and carefully cleaned rather than leave where they'd been shot. He had others stashed in various bolt holes, but he wouldn't be getting any more now unless he went to Stark. He'd need every single one of them them for whatever was coming.

He set the last one down. He'd pulled it out of the neck of Agent Hoskins, his handler on the Syria mission. He'd told Clint that HQ had ordered everyone to bury their ops, then proceeded to try and follow that order a little too literally.

Clint hoped like hell the man had been HYDRA.

"What was it you said?" she asked softly. "Talk to me, I believe it was."

He shook his head, voice deliberately light. "Not a chance. I've already had my crisis for this decade."

"Clint." The single word made something in his chest clench. Tash could wield gentleness like a weapon, and half the time he wasn't even sure she knew her own strength. "You lost everything, too."

"No." He met her eyes again, nothing but steel in his voice. "Not everything, this time."

That startled a small smile out of her. "No. Not for either of us." She reached over, smoothing her fingertips lightly along his jawline as her expression sobered again. "But you have every right to be angry."

Clint leaned into her touch almost without thinking about it. "Speaking of which, any street gangs around here that need to be taken out? We're not up for HYDRA hunting yet, but my bow hand's already getting twitchy."

He got the smile back, wider this time. "I'll see what I can do."

"Thank you." Then Clint sighed, closing his eyes. "You forget, I've done this before."

The Carson Carnival of Traveling Wonders hadn't been the world, but to the teenage runaway Clint had been it had been close enough. He still remembered lying there in the parking lot, face bleeding and his entire body one enormous bruise from his half-assed attempt to do the right thing. Realizing that the home he'd hoped he'd found, the family he'd thought he'd had, had been a lie.

Only an idiot made that same mistake twice.

He opened his eyes, caught her hand to press a kiss against her fingertips. "SHIELD never mattered as much to me as it did to you. I—"

"—see things better at a distance," she finished, expression wry. "Yes, I know."

He let himself smile, squeezing her hand. "Because you know everything."

"Most of the world knows everything, actually." She looked solemn again. "Have you read the files?"

Clint shook his head. Since the moment he’d made it to Turkey and seen some asshole tourist playing a video of the destruction in D.C., his only goal had been to get to Tash. He’d heard the basics from various news reports while he’d been on the move, but that had been it.

Her expression relaxed slightly. "Don't." She stood, pressing a kiss against his forehead on the way up. "We don't need the intel yet."

He watched her walk over to what laughingly passed for the kitchen, starting the process of scaring a cup of coffee out of the coffeemaker she'd scrounged up from someplace. Her black hair was sleep-mussed, sticking out in all different directions, and though he still hated the color she'd at least given up on straightening it.

And it was so much easier thinking about that than how close he'd come to losing her.

"Tash." His voice was rough with the emotion suddenly rising up in his throat. She turned to look at him, curious, the light glinting off her arrow necklace as she moved. His own spider charm was a warm spot against his chest, a talisman that had kept the panic had bay as he'd snuck, stolen and scrambled his way back to her.

He swallowed, a thousand different things to say crowding in his throat. _You're the home I thought I'd stopped letting myself have. If you'd died, I would have killed them all and then hunted you down in whatever miserable corner of the afterlife you'd dragged me to. Losing you would break me in a way nothing else would. I love you. I love you. I love you._

She smiled at him as if she could hear every word. "Want some coffee?"

Clint pushed himself to his feet, feeling his own smile form as he walked over to her. "Not the way you make it. That stuff could kill a man."


End file.
